"This handbook offers an insight into a set of investigative practices that will make your first steps into this exciting and demanding discipline, easier. You will find the elements that we consider to be the most important aspects of investigative journalistic work, along with numerous examples an...d case studies, additional reading material, data and exercises. Although the emphasis is placed on the experiences of journalists from the region, our collaboration with Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, ensures a wider perspective, tackling all of the basic principles of good investigative work. The book will take you through the very substance of investigative journalism, from the definition of what investigative journalism really is, and what it is not, through the investigative process itself and the set of techniques for following paper and people trails, interviewing and checking the legal implications of your work, and putting the article together. Although the best approach to this handbook is to read these chapters one by one in the order in which they are presented, you can also go directly to the parts that are of particular interest to you - this may be particularly relevant for the chapters that deal with investigative techniques and specific regional practices related to them." (Introduction)
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"Losing Control: freedom of the press in Asia takes us right up to the end of this tumultuous century. It deals with the Chinese media cranking up its latest propaganda campaign, this time against the Falun Gong. It discusses how the Indonesian media lost its way in reporting the tragedy in East Tim...or. And it comments on how the Cambodian media-or at least parts of it-surprisingly reported the allegations that the Prime Minister's wife had her husband's movie star girlfriend assassinated. The book adopts a country-by-country approach dealing with all the countries in Northeast and Southeast Asia. It does not attempt to sweep across to the sub-continent. It would not be possible to do justice to any discussion of freedom of the press in that region by sandwiching it in between the pages of a book about East Asia. The methodology is based on an underlying assumption: that journalists are best placed to provide the most up-to-date analysis of their own industry. Where possible, local journalists have contributed the country chapters. In some cases a more useful outcome could be achieved by employing foreign correspondents and commentators. Authors have written their chapters using journalistic research tools, such as first hand interviews, as well as more conventional academic methods." (p.14)
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